Marked uses of tense/aspect morphology and situation type

In this study explanations are sought for the often reported associations in child language between tense/aspect morphology and situation type. The study is done on the basis of adult-adult data, child language and input language to the children. First of all it is shown that the associations are natural, since they are strong in adult-adult English as well. Only in the early stages does child language differ from this distribution, in that the associations are either stronger or different. Input data appear to account to a large extent for these differing patterns. An additional explanation is found in the discourse topics: within the context of talking about the here-and-now, the combinations of morphology and situation type that can be seen as unmarked suffice. In the context of talking about past events and of giving general comments about the world, marked combinations are necessary. It is shown that children in and their parents at the early ages mainly talk about the here-and-now, whereas adults among themselves hardly ever do so. Later, describing past events and commenting on the world becomes more frequent in child language and input, and, as a consequence, marked combinations of tense/aspect morphology and situation types increase in use

Rejuvenating UDEL

Abstract The purpose of my poster is to illustrate the development of a number of resources designed to aid in the learning and teaching of information skills, either as part of a skills session in the library or pc lab, or as part of self-directed study. It will highlight the aims of the Information Skills project team at the University of Derby, along with a timeline for the project to the present day. Included will be information on the tutorials currently completed using the Adobe Captivate software, with screenshots of same to show some of the creative standards agreed upon. As a starting point for the project we used the library catalogue as the 'test' piece which was trialled among the student body, feedback from which led to the consolidation of the standards employed in all demonstrations as well as to modifications to the original example tutorial. Examples of some of the questions asked during the trial will be included on the poster to illustrate what feedback we were looking for. The poster will also include projections for the future, highlighting the directions in which we look to take the project as it becomes incorporated into the daily work of subject librarians at the University. It will also indicate how we plan to measure the impact of these resources on the student experience and use the subsequent feedback to further develop and improve those resources for the future. Handouts detailing key points from the poster will be available for colleagues to take away with them, and if possible a demonstration of one of the tutorials will also take place. Two of the tutorials are publically available without VLE access and those links will be included on the handout for colleagues to look at in their own time

Medical students writing on death, dying and palliative care : a qualitative analysis of reflective essays

Background: Medical students and doctors are becoming better prepared to care for patients with palliative care needs and support patients at the end of life. This preparation needs to start at medical school. Objective: To assess how medical students learn about death, dying and palliative care during a clinical placement using reflective essays and to provide insights to improve medical education about end of life care and/or palliative care. Methods: Qualitative study in which all reflective essays written by third year medical students in one year from a UK medical school were searched electronically for those that included ‘death’, ‘dying’ and ‘palliative care’. The anonymised data were managed using QSR NVivo 10 software, and a systematic analysis was conducted in three distinct phases: (1) open coding; (2) axial coding and (3) selective coding. Ethical approval was received. Results: Fifty-four essays met the inclusion criteria from 241 essays screened for the terms ‘death’, ‘dying’ or ‘palliative’, 22 students gave consent for participation and their 24 essays were included. Saturation of themes was reached. Three overarching themes were identified: emotions, empathy, and experiential and reflective learning. Students emphasised trying to develop a balance between showing empathy and their emotional state. Students learned a lot from clinical encounters and watching doctors manage difficult situations, as well as from their refection during and after the experience. Conclusions: Reflective essays give insights into the way students learn about death, dying and palliative care and how it affects them personally as well as the preparation that is needed to be better equipped to deal with these kinds of experiences. Analysis of the essays enabled the proposal of new strategies to help make them more effective learning tools and to optimise students’ learning from a palliative care attachment

Scheduling in the manufacture of evaporative air conditioners

The MISG examined the problem of scheduling production of air conditioners at Seeley International. Seeley's objective was to meet their demand in a more cost-effective way. Two models are proposed to achieve this objective. A long term master production schedule with a yearly planning horizon was formulated to give Seeley a broad based schedule for planning production to meet forecast demands and production constraints. Output from this model is designed to provide the appropriate number of units of each product type or sub-assembly item to be produced in the following week. This output is then designed to be the input to a more detailed short term model for scheduling production at the machine level. The short term model is formulated to handle a mixture of both finished products and sub-assemblies. The objective of the short term model is to minimise total production time to free up the use of resources in order to allow for external orders. Directions for further work are discussed

INCREASING COORDINATION IN THE PLANT AND PLANT PRODUCT PROCESSING AND HANDLING SECTOR

Agribusiness, Food Economy, Industry Analysis, Five Forces, Food Processing, Agribusiness, L10, L16, L66, Q13,

Information-theoretic measures of music listening behaviour

We present an information-theoretic approach to the mea- surement of users’ music listening behaviour and selection of music features. Existing ethnographic studies of mu- sic use have guided the design of music retrieval systems however are typically qualitative and exploratory in nature. We introduce the SPUD dataset, comprising 10, 000 hand- made playlists, with user and audio stream metadata. With this, we illustrate the use of entropy for analysing music listening behaviour, e.g. identifying when a user changed music retrieval system. We then develop an approach to identifying music features that reflect users’ criteria for playlist curation, rejecting features that are independent of user behaviour. The dataset and the code used to produce it are made available. The techniques described support a quantitative yet user-centred approach to the evaluation of music features and retrieval systems, without assuming objective ground truth labels

Communication and support from health-care professionals to families, with dependent children, following the diagnosis of parental life-limiting illness : a systematic review

Background: Communication between parents and their children about parental life-limiting illness is stressful. Parents want support from health-care professionals; however, the extent of this support is not known. Awareness of family’s needs would help ensure appropriate support. Aim: To find the current literature exploring (1) how parents with a life-limiting illness, who have dependent children, perceive health-care professionals’ communication with them about the illness, diagnosis and treatments, including how social, practical and emotional support is offered to them and (2) how this contributes to the parents’ feelings of supporting their children. Design: A systematic literature review and narrative synthesis. Data sources: Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL and ASSIA ProQuest were searched in November 2015 for studies assessing communication between health-care professionals and parents about how to talk with their children about the parent’s illness. Results: There were 1342 records identified, five qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria (55 ill parents, 11 spouses/carers, 26 children and 16 health-care professionals). Parents wanted information from health-care professionals about how to talk to their children about the illness; this was not routinely offered. Children also want to talk with a health-care professional about their parents’ illness. Health-care professionals are concerned that conversations with parents and their children will be too difficult and time-consuming. Conclusion: Parents with a life-limiting illness want support from their health-care professionals about how to communicate with their children about the illness. Their children look to health-care professionals for information about their parent’s illness. Health-care professionals, have an important role but appear reluctant to address these concerns because of fears of insufficient time and expertise

End-of-life care for non-cancer patients

[Extract]: The origins and early development of palliative care focussed on patients with cancer, apart from sporadic developments in a few non-malignant diseases such as MND and HIV. In the UK, this has been compounded by the setting of palliative care outside the National Health Service, principally funded by cancer-related charities who, at the time were instituted to relieve the suffering associated with cancer. When the modern hospice movement began, the course of malignant disease was seen as more predictable, with a defined palliative phase when anti-cancer treatments were no longer indicated. In the UK and many areas of the world where it was first adopted such as the Canada, USA, mainland Europe and Australia, this led to the traditional model of palliative care services, involved only in people with a prognosis of a few weeks or months. As a result, services have focused primarily on cancer leading to service and symptom management inequalities for equally needy patients with non-malignant diseases